Quickstart Guide

The Foreman installer is a collection of Puppet modules that installs everything required for a full working Foreman setup. It uses native OS packaging (e.g. RPM and .deb packages) and adds necessary configuration for the complete installation.

Components include the Foreman web UI, Smart Proxy, Passenger, a Puppet master (either Puppet Server or under Passenger), and optionally TFTP, DNS and DHCP servers. It is configurable and the Puppet modules can be read or run in “no-op” mode to see what changes it will make.

Supported platforms

CentOS, Scientific Linux or Oracle Linux 7, x86_64

Debian 8 (Jessie), i386/amd64/armhf

Fedora 24, x86_64

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, x86_64

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial), i386/amd64/armhf/aarch64

Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty), i386/amd64

Other operating systems will need to use alternative installation methods (see the manual).

Installation

The Foreman installer uses Puppet to install Foreman. This guide assumes that you have a newly installed operating system, on which the installer will setup Foreman, a Puppet master, and the Smart Proxy by default.

Repositories

Check the repository is enabled with yum repolist after running the above command, as it can silently fail when subscription does not provide it.

If you're using RH Satellite 5, you should instead sync and enable the channel there.

Using a recent version of Puppet is recommended, which is available from the Puppet Labs repository.
You may skip this and use the older version from EPEL without a problem, however it has reduced community support.
To use Puppet 4.x with Puppet Agent and Puppet Server:

Using Puppet 4.x is recommended, which is available from the Puppet Labs repository.
You may skip this and use Puppet 3.x from Debian without a problem, however it has reduced community support.
To use Puppet 4.x with Puppet Agent and Puppet Server:

Using Puppet 4.x is recommended, which is available from the Puppet Labs repository.
You may skip this and use Puppet 3.x from Ubuntu without a problem, however it has reduced community support.
To use Puppet 4.x with Puppet Agent and Puppet Server:

Downloading the installer

Running the installer

Ensure that ping $(hostname -f) shows the real IP address, not 127.0.1.1. Change or remove this entry from /etc/hosts if present.

The installation run is non-interactive, but the configuration can be customized by supplying any of the options listed in foreman-installer --help, or by running foreman-installer -i for interactive mode. More examples are given in the Installation Options section. Adding -v will disable the progress bar and display all changes. To run the installer, execute:

foreman-installer

After it completes, the installer will print some details about where to find Foreman and the Smart Proxy and Puppet master if they were installed along Foreman. Output should be similar to this:

* Foreman is running at https://theforeman.example.com
Initial credentials are admin / 3ekw5xtyXCoXxS29
* Foreman Proxy is running at https://theforeman.example.com:8443
* Puppetmaster is running at port 8140
The full log is at /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman-installer.log